


Never Fallen From Quite This High

by MellytheHun



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Awkward Flirting, Bad Flirting, Bad Sharing, Bisexual Richie Tozier, Childhood Friends, Coming of Age, Eddie Kaspbrak is a Mess, Explicit Sexual Content, First Kiss, First Time, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, High School, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining, Oblivious Richie, Pining, References to Shakespeare, Resolved Sexual Tension, Sexual Tension, Shakespeare Quotations, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Sorry For Roasting You Flirting, Teen Angst, Teen Romance, Teenagers, morons to lovers, oblivious eddie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-11-22 12:01:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20873876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MellytheHun/pseuds/MellytheHun
Summary: Giving a thoughtful pause, Eddie purposefully glances down at Richie’s lips, can see or somehow feel the eager breath they’re parted on, then he looks back into Richie’s dark eyes, and tells him seriously, “saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.”Richie nods in understanding, though his expression is turning rather desperate.“Then… then move not, while my prayer’s effect I take…”





	1. The Audition

**Author's Note:**

> This is a multi-chaptered fic, and warnings will be placed in beginning notes ALWAYS. Nothing to tag for in this first chapter, though, so just enjoy!

It’s odd, that in this hour of strain, and stress, under the scrutiny of authorities, and peers, Richie’s palm is warm, calloused, and completely dry against Eddie’s.

He looks very respectable, like this - maybe he was born in the wrong era, fashion-wise. The velvety shirt he’s got on has gold trimmings on the high collar, and at the cuffs of the sleeves, and the midnight shade of blue suits his complexion well. 

It’s a good thing he likes wearing tight jeans on any ordinary day, because the pants he’s wearing this night are constricting, to say the least, though they flatter him. The boots more than anything else, Eddie knows he must like, as they only make him taller, which is so unfair. 

He’s wearing contacts, which actually allows Eddie to see how his brows move, and how thick and dark his eyelashes are; his hair is in some (relative) order, and the lights moving above him halo him beautifully. The people dancing around them scatter light and color in Eddie’s periphery, like those night light projectors that move the sky across one’s bedroom ceiling.

Richie truly couldn’t look more handsome, and it makes Eddie _ weak _.

They circle one another like prowling animals, but their energy is gentle curiosity, not hunting, and despite the fact that Eddie’s heart is somewhere in his throat, he doesn’t cower; with every sure step Richie takes, leading them in a simple rotation, palm-to-palm, Eddie becomes more and more determined not to lose his head.

It feels like he could, though.

The way Richie’s eyes glisten, how his pink lips part, the apple of his throat bobs - it’s all hypnotizing.

“If I profane with my unworthiest hand, this holy shrine, the gentle fine is this…” Richie tells him, voice low and only just audible to their audience, “my lips - two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.”

Eddie’s already blushing because he _ always _ blushes when they do this.

He wonders if Richie notices.

Eddie splays his fingers out more against Richie’s, cocks his head to the side, and smiles coyly, “good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much. Which mannerly devotion shows in this, for saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,” and Eddie presses their palms more fully together, coming to stand still, pinned under the hefty weight of Richie’s stare, “... and palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.”

With some difficulty, Richie swallows, and he takes a step closer to Eddie, blocking more of the overhead lights with his height, and his hair.

“Have not saints, and holy palmers too?” he asks.

Eddie gives a breathless sort of laugh, a flirtation, “aye, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.”

Thunderous heart pounding away in his chest, Eddie watches how Richie’s eyes flicker down to his mouth seemingly beyond his control, and it would be obscene, for Richie to look at him that way, were it not also a look of a thoroughly spellbound man.

“Oh,” Richie breathes, eyes flickering back up to Eddie’s, “then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do. They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.”

Giving a thoughtful pause, Eddie purposefully glances down at Richie’s lips, can see or somehow feel the eager breath they’re parted on, then he looks back into Richie’s dark eyes, and tells him seriously, “saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.”

Richie nods in understanding, though his expression is turning rather desperate. 

“Then… then move not, while my prayer’s effect I take…”

A gasp ripples across their audience, and Eddie wants to die a little, because _ he _ knows that _ they _ know what’s about to happen - what Richie is about to do, what Eddie is going to _ let _ him do, but Act One, Scene Five of _ Romeo and Juliet _ isn’t where it begins.

* * *

It begins much further back, really - further back perhaps than even Eddie is willing to recount for anyone other than Richie.

If pressed, or under oath, Eddie would say it began at the auditions.

His mother had insisted since elementary school that sports were simply too dangerous, that Eddie was too frail to withstand the demands of a sports team, that he would inevitably get hurt, sick, or worse - he couldn’t join those terribly violent sports, if not to spare himself injury, to spare his poor mother her nerves. 

He tolerated that coddling all through elementary and middle school, but Eddie wanted high school to be enjoyable to _ some _ degree, so he fought for his right to join clubs - he wanted extracurricular stuff to do, and to be able to talk about in his eventual college applications.

His mother wouldn’t hear a word about band, telling him that his asthma would render him useless, and that if he didn’t play an air instrument, that the marching would take it out of him, anyway. He rightfully didn’t believe any of that, but surrendered band, wasn’t interested in choir, and when his mother tutted at the ‘fumes,’ he’d be exposed to in an art club, he finally selected the drama club.

He had an extracurricular to call his own, and his mother wasn’t having a cow - they all won.

The drama teacher, Mrs. Rosen, had been thrilled when he signed up - there were exactly four young men in the drama club, other than Eddie, none of which particularly liked or disliked Eddie, but more importantly, there were _ thirty _ young women.

Poor Mrs. Rosen was _ hurting _ for teenage boys willing to act, dance, and/or sing on a stage in front of their peers, and Eddie understood why. 

In a town like Derry, he was much more inclined to stick behind the stage, too, and be a part of the building and designing of sets, and lights, but Mrs. Rosen spotted his weakness against female authority almost immediately. 

Once she knew how to manipulate Eddie, she would insist he read scenes, insist he try the vocals for some singular musical number, insist he dance with the many girls that wanted, and needed a partner to practice with - and he would bow to her power, same as he did with his mother. 

Whenever one of the Losers gave him a hard time about it, he simply said, ‘it’s in my nature,’ but the truth was he had a very specific weakness that Mrs. Rosen was mercilessly exploiting. Eddie was sort of used to that too, though.

That’s how Eddie found himself grandfathered into the school play.

In the beginning of October, she put up the flyers for auditions for _ Romeo and Juliet_, all over every available cork board in the high school. 

The existing members of the drama club were already counted among the cast and crew, but new slots were impossible to fill. The flyers had tempted maybe five more girls out of hiding within the first three weeks, but no one else.

Sincerely sad for Mrs. Rosen, Eddie was staring forlornly at an empty call-sheet for auditions in the hall when he heard a pen click behind him. 

He turned around, and found Richie there, looking grim.

Shoving his ridiculous glasses up his nose unnecessarily (in what Eddie knew was a nervous tic), Richie sighed deeply, used his height to lean over Eddie, practically trapping him against the wall, and he signed his name on the sheet.

“Wait - you’re auditioning for _ Romeo and Juliet_? Willingly?” Eddie asked incredulously.

“I’m insulted you think I’d do anything like this without a proverbial gun to my head,” Richie told him, as several more young men filed toward the sheet, pens and pencils ready.

“Whuh-uh - what’s going on?” Eddie asked, guided by a hand on his lower back, away from the forming mob of young men at the corkboard.

“The drama club teacher -”

“Mrs. Rosen,” Eddie supplied.

“Sure, yeah - she came into a bunch of the math and science classes today,” Richie explains, “and said she needs an all-male cast for her rendition of Shakespeare. That she’s doing it ‘the way Shakespeare intended for it to be seen,’ or something stupid like that.”

“And you wanted to help her?”

“_Fuck _no,” Richie exclaimed, readjusting his backpack over his shoulder; Eddie hadn’t noticed that Richie’s other hand still hadn’t left his back, “She made a deal with a bunch of the science and math teachers - if the boys sign up for the play, one failed test is forgiven, replaced with a ‘B,’ and if any of the boys with failing grades sign up, actually go to their audition, and get parts in the show - which, face it, at this point, is guaranteed - they’ll add ten points to your over all average at the end of the year, which could save you an entire letter grade.”

“Holy shit,” Eddie commented, wondering if that was at all ethical, “So, you’re auditioning?”

“Yu**p** ,” Richie answered, popping the ‘p,’ and moving his guiding arm around Eddie from his back to his shoulders, “It’s that, or fail Chemistry, and wind up in summer school, which - _ fuck no _ even harder to that. I’m gonna get Mercutio.”

“You _ know _ the play? Since when do you know _ plays_?” Eddie asked, genuinely confused, half-grinning.

“Mercutio makes dick jokes, and gets in sword fights. We’re clearly the same person. Of course I know about Mercutio.”

Eddie gave him a slanted, suspicious glare, still smiling, in part, though, because, even when he wasn’t smiling on the outside, Richie Tozier made him _ smile _.

Not that Eddie was fool enough to_ tell _ Richie that, _ ever_.

“Name a single other character - _ not _ including the fucking protagonists.” 

Richie took the time to make a show of coming up with something, rubbing his chin with a thoughtful hand, then guessing, “uh… catapult?”

“Capulet, you asshole,” Eddie laughed.

“Ah, close enough,” Richie pardoned, shrugging, “We gotta go to the audition with a memorized monologue from a different show, though, which sucks for _ several _ reasons! You’d think, just ‘audition with something else Shakespearean, and boring, and hard to pronounce, and mandatory,’ would be the cherry on the top of the _ I Hate This _ Sundae, but on top of all those super fun parts of the audition, she basically banned all the funny ones - she said, because it’s a drama, she wants us to show her we can be serious. Like. Who wants that garbage?”

“Yeah, who would ever want to be serious, ever, for any reason?” Eddie asked back sarcastically, “Only garbage people, with garbage opinions, obviously.”

“Right? You get me, Eds,” Richie agreed, ignoring his tone.

Eddie rolled his eyes, and at lunch, spoke with the other Losers about it, wondering if any others in the group would be auditioning.

Bill smiled, shrugged, and announced, “I g-g-get a f-free p-pass, since no-nobody wants a st-stammerer on s-stage.”

“Are speech impediments contagious?” Richie implored, “Can your tongue give my tongue what your tongue has? Bill, I know I always say this, but I mean it this time - we should make out, see if you can pass it along to me, so I can get out of this too -”

“B-Beep beep, Richie,” Bill admonished, rosiness high in his cheeks the way Eddie got too, whenever Richie would just make an absurd request like that.

“Am I so grotesque? Truly?” Richie asked pitifully, hands to his chest.

Bill shook his head fondly as Stanley glared above his open book, and said, “yes.”

Gasping, as though fatally wounded, Richie slumped onto the lunch table, and uttered dramatically, “et tu, Stan?”

“Wrong play, Richie,” Ben told him with a smile, “but good reference.”

“This is so unfair,” Richie decided, “So, what? I’m the only one here who royally sucks at a science or math?”

“I’m not too good in Chemistry either, actually,” Ben admitted, “but I don’t know that I’m desperate enough to do the play, though.”

“Oh, come on!” Richie plead, reaching across the table toward Ben like a lifeline, “Please! At least audition with me!”

With a slanted mouth of general distaste, Ben looked about uncertainly. When none of the other Losers indicated they’d help, Ben told Richie, “I’ll, uh… I’ll see. Maybe.”

“‘_Maybe,’ is a baby that just needs to be hugged until it’s a ‘yes_!’” Richie sang, jumping to the other side of the table to wrap Ben up in a too-tight hug (Eddie wasn’t sure who bestowed that power unto Richie, but it was how Richie got a ‘yes,’ to nearly every demand he made).

Ben and Bill traded looks over Stan’s head, and at Ben’s rightfully worried expression, Bill openly laughed, while Stan seemed to believe the entire conversation was below his station. 

Eddie was, perhaps, the only one at the table that noticed the way Stan’s cheeks rounded up, as though in a smile, behind his book.

Auditions would be just before Halloween, which was actually scarier to all of them than all the flashback-triggering, upsetting costumes they were bound to see in the streets once the auditions were over.

The year before, on Halloween, had seen Richie so scared by a teenager in a clown costume that he’d decked the guy without hesitation, causing a huge scene. 

When the clown-kid had landed on the sidewalk with a thud, and an angry, ‘what the fuck!?’ Richie had screamed at him, held back by Bill and Mike from potentially going in for the kill, ‘a _ clown_!? _ Seriously_!? _ Fuck _ you, dude! It’s the lowest hanging fruit! _ The lowest hanging fruit_! Get fucked!’

None of them had discussed what they would do for the next Halloween, if perhaps they just needed to stay indoors for all future Halloweens, but at least this year, something scarier had presented itself; performance anxiety.

Mrs. Rosen sat at the front of the auditorium, closest to the stage, with a clipboard and notepad in front of her. She had the drama club members assembled behind her, and further back, all the people auditioning. 

There were at least forty boys sitting around the auditorium - Eddie couldn’t help but admire Mrs. Rosen for having achieved what she had. It was a dirty play to make, Eddie thought - very sneaky of her, to convince the math and science departments that they would somehow benefit from this too. Maybe they did, in some way Eddie couldn’t immediately identify.

More important to Eddie, though, was that Ben and Richie were there, the day of auditions; he mocked Richie through his entire waiting process, fully believing he would make an ass of himself, having been unable to stay serious for more than twenty seconds at a time for his entire life. 

Richie took offense to those accusations, but not enough - he was distracted, watching the other boys audition with clearly mounting anxiety. 

Ben wasn’t much better off, though Eddie was much more curious about what he’d chosen to memorize, as Ben was more one for the arts than Richie.

“It’s - uh - it’s that ‘is this a dagger before me,’ monologue, from _ Macbeth_,” Ben explained, twisting his wrists, “I might puke all over the stage, though, before I get through it.”

“Why’d you choose it?” Eddie asked, as he knew Mrs. Rosen would ask - that was her follow-up question to every auditioner’s choice in monologue or soliloquy. 

“Honestly, I just liked the sound of it,” Ben answered, “When I read it aloud, I liked the way it sounded, and felt. Iambic pentameter can feel clunky sometimes, but not with this one - not for me, anyway.”

“What about you, Richie?” Eddie asked, wondering if perhaps (though ‘the funny ones,’ had been banned) Richie had chosen something from _ A Midsummer Night’s Dream_. It seemed most like him to do - or he may have chosen _ Hamlet_’s ‘to be, or not to be,’ like twelve of the other boys that auditioned that day.

Before Richie had a chance to answer, though, Ben was called to audition, and Eddie and Richie stopped speaking, and devoted their focus to him in a show of support, and dutiful attention. 

When asked, Ben said he’d like any part in the show, even Juliet - which some of the other boys, still seated, had laughed at - Mrs. Rosen liked that answer, though. She accepted his monologue, and why he’d chosen it, and Ben performed it well, stammering maybe twice. 

Mrs. Rosen smiled through his delivery, clearly pleased, and writing notes the entire while.

Once Ben was done, he promised to stay as an emotional support for Richie, which started as a bit of a joke, but as names closer to Richie’s last initial were called, Richie clammed up more, and more. He wouldn’t thank Ben, because he never seemed to thank anyone for anything, but he appreciated it, in his own, weird, Richie Way. 

Eddie nearly felt bad for Richie, watching him bite his cuticles, and jiggle his leg up and down, but, frankly, Richie made everyone so uncomfortable all the Goddamn time, he half-believed that Richie _ deserved _ to squirm a bit for once. 

When Richie _ was _ finally called onto the stage, he didn’t look back to Eddie or Ben, and the auditorium had emptied significantly, as the name ‘Tozier,’ was much further down the list in alphabetical order, and most others had fled as soon as their audition was over. 

“Richard Tozier?”

“Yeah,” Richie said as he stepped onto center stage, wiping the sweat from his palms on his jeans, “‘Richie,’ is fine, though.”

“Okay, Richie,” Mrs. Rosen agreed, making a note on her pad, “What part are you hoping to get, what are you going to perform for me today, and why?”

“I’d like to be Mercutio,” Richie admitted politely, “And I’m doing the, uh - Saint Crispin’s speech, from _ Henry the Fifth_.”

Eddie and Ben exchanged surprised glances, unfamiliar with the play, and the speech; but the thought of Richie reading a historical play was nearly comedic in and of itself. It was evident to both of them, that neither of them knew what to make of that.

Mrs. Rosen didn’t even know Richie, and she still seemed caught off-guard.

“That’s_ quite _ a speech to have memorized in just a week.”

“I’m good at memorizing,” Richie told her lamely.

“Alright,” she allowed him, though with a tone of apparent disbelief (Eddie tended to side with teachers; if she believed it was too hard a speech to have memorized in a week, it probably was, but Eddie desperately hoped Richie would prove her wrong), “And why did you choose this piece?”

Richie looked down at his shoes, then up at the stage lights, then he sighed, rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, and told her, “I… I went through something once. Uhm. With my friends - kind of like a battle. And I… it’s personal to me, I guess. I read it, and I thought - well, no - I felt. I felt something when I read it, so, I… so, that’s the one I’m doing.”

Ben folded his legs on the red cushion of the auditorium seat, as though getting comfortable, and he seemed deeply, genuinely intrigued; Eddie was too, but he was more shocked that Richie was willingly, if covertly, speaking about It. 

He never spoke about It; not when things were quiet, and easy, not when things were loud, and scary, not after last Halloween, not when he woke up screaming at sleepovers, not when he couldn’t sleep at all, and so snuck over to Eddie’s house for company - he _ never _ spoke about It. 

And that summer four years ago was not something any of them broached with confidence - they all tip-toed around it, talking _ around _ the subject, if ever it half came up in conversation, somehow. But none of them spoke about what happened, or how they felt; it was as if they were all purposefully trying to forget that summer happened, without losing the bonds they’d made through it.

It was a difficult line to walk. 

Eddie worried for Richie, that he was exposing his heart so, and he inwardly cursed himself for not having read _ Henry V _.

“Okay - take it away, whenever you’re ready, Richie,” Mrs. Rosen told him, sounding fascinated as well.

Richie took his hands out of his pockets, ruffled his hair around, shook out his arms, shut his eyes, and breathed in deeply; Eddie was astonished he was taking it so seriously. 

And when Richie opened his eyes again, he was _ different_.

“What's he that wishes so? My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin - if we are mark'd to die, we are enow to do our country loss, and if to live, the fewer men, the greater share of honor.”

Eddie and Ben traded astonished looks once more, then looked back at Richie as he paced forward on the stage, gesticulating and emoting in such a captivating way that Mrs. Rosen put her pen down altogether.

“God's will!” Richie exclaimed, “I pray thee, wish not _ one _ man more! _ By Jove_, I am not covetous for gold, nor care I who doth feed upon my cost - it yearns me not if men my garments wear; such outward things dwell not in my desires - _ but _ if it be a sin to covet honor…” Richie shook his head, grinning sardonically, “I am the most _ offending soul alive_.”

He showed a hand to an imaginary co-star on stage, and insisted more gently, “no. Faith, my coz - wish not a man from England. God's peace, I would not lose so great an honor as _ one _ man more, methinks, would share from me for the best hope I have. Oh, do not wish one more."

Motioning at his chest and then out again, Richie stood tall, regal, and continued, “rather proclaim it, Westmoreland - through my host - that he which hath no stomach to this fight? - let him depart!” Richie offered with a sweep of his arm, as if to show the cowards their exit points, “his passport shall be made, and crowns for convoy put into his purse.”

Going still, Richie said ferociously, with barely contained rage, “_we _ would not _ die _ in that man's company that _ fears _ his fellowship to die with _ us_.”

Looking briefly in another direction for a moment, Richie picked up more steam, coming back to this conversation King Henry was having, solemn, and brave, “this day is called the feast of Crispian. He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, will stand a _ tip-toe _ when the day is named, and rouse him at the name of Crispian. He that shall live this day, and see old age, will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors, and say 'tomorrow is Saint Crispian.' Then will he strip his sleeve,” Richie demonstrated, pulling up the long-sleeve under his t-shirt to show his long, pale forearms, “and show his scars, and say 'these wounds I had on Crispin's day.'”

After a moment’s contemplation, he dropped his arm, and looked out into the middle distance.

“Old men forget - yet all shall be forgot. But _ he _ will remember - _ with advantages _ \- what feats he did that day,” Richie began to smile, “Then shall our names, familiar in his mouth as household words; Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter, Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester, be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd. This story shall the good man teach his son; and Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, from this day to the _ ending of the world_, but _ we _ in it _ shall be _ remember'd.”

He looked out, as if gazing upon King Henry’s loyal army, smiling, but still towering somehow, still giving an air that spoke to certainty, and grace that Eddie didn’t know could be faked.

Maybe it wasn’t fake.

“We few. We _ happy _ few,” Richie amended, “we band of _ brothers _ \- for he, today, that sheds his blood with me shall be _ my brother_. Be he ne'er so vile, this day shall gentle his condition, and gentlemen in England now abed shall think themselves _ accursed _ they were not here!”

Richie’s last proclamation echoed in the hall, until he broke the reverberating sound, by simply, and quietly, adding, “and they shall hold their manhoods _ cheap_, whiles _ any _ speaks that fought with _ us _ upon this Saint Crispin's day.”

There was a resounding silence, and then an eruption of applause from the remaining students, the drama club members, and then Mrs. Rosen, who stood to applaud.

Richie grinned the goofy way he did whenever he was secretly embarrassed. 

Eddie didn’t even realize he wasn’t clapping - he was lost, staring at Richie as though he were seeing Richie for the first time, unsure of what he’d just watch unfold.

“Richie,” Mrs. Rosen began, a smile in her voice, “That was an astounding performance. Truly. You have an understanding of the text that is - utterly remarkable. I can tell you read it carefully, understood every word, and you delivered that speech in such a way, I feel confident saying that anyone who didn’t understand every word, still understood everything you meant.”

There were murmurs of agreement, and Richie tugged at his patterned shirt collar, muttering, “uh, thanks.”

“I hate to deny you the part you requested, Richie, but I can’t pass this opportunity up,” Mrs. Rosen began, crossing her arms over her chest, “It looks like I’ve found my Romeo.”

The drama club (without Eddie) applauded louder, clearly pleased with this decision; Richie had gone distinctly pale, though.

“W-Wait - I wanted to be Mercutio, though -”

“I know, dear, but you’ve a grasp on Shakespeare I have only found in one other student, and so, you’ll have to allow me this. I need you to lead.”

“Who’s the other student?” Richie asked, as though outraged.

“Edward Kaspbrak.”

The drama club members turned to look at Eddie, who also felt the blood drain from his face.

“What?” he croaked, looking to one of his casual friends from drama club.

Rebecca, who was a bit of Friend to All in personality type, grinned at him, and explained, “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything, Eddie! We voted on you as soon as we found out how Mrs. Rosen was casting the play! We just knew you’d make the perfect Juliet.”

“I - _ me_? - I - ! - ** _me_**?! _ Juliet_? _ I’m _ going to be _ Juliet_, to _ Richie’s _ -”

“To Richie Tozier’s Romeo,” Mrs. Rosen finished for him, jotting something down on her notepad, “Yes, indeed. I was worried we wouldn’t find someone to compliment you, in that role, but I’m glad I can still be surprised these days.”

Mrs. Rosen smiled at him, as though she hadn’t just delivered some of the worst news of Eddie’s life.

“Why -”

“It’s not to be mean, Eddie,” Rebecca piped up, looking at him worriedly, “Some of the other club members and I had been talking about how, if _ we _ couldn’t be Juliet, you deserved to be. You always pick up on the poetry, and dialogues really well in club, better and faster than any of us - and we all thought you’d be really pretty, as Juliet.”

“And Richie’s really tall,” another club member said, “Not that you’re short, Eddie, but Richie will make you seem smaller on stage, because of how tall he is. That will lend itself well to the illusion that you’re a girl.”

Ben snorted a laugh next to Eddie, probably just because he knew how much Eddie hated being reminded that Richie had gotten so much taller than him, and Eddie only_ just _resisted the urge to shove his elbow into Ben’s gut. 

“There’s no shame in playing a girl,” Mrs. Rosen told the room at large, looking stern, “There is no shame in being a girl, or acting as one. A single giggle in poor taste, and you can all kiss your passing averages goodbye. Understood?”

With a definite shift in mood, Ben cleared his throat, and the room quieted down some.

“But… I - Romeo and Juliet _ kiss_,” Richie stated, clearly concerned.

Mrs. Rosen turned to him again, and asked, “problem?”

As her back was turned to the audience, Eddie couldn’t see what expression Mrs. Rosen was wearing - only Richie could see. Whatever it was, it must have given Richie something of a fright.

He momentarily glanced up at Eddie, then back to Mrs. Rosen, flushed red all the way down his neck, and pocketed his hands.

“No, ma’am.”

“Good,” Mrs. Rosen celebrated gladly, “Hang back with the rest of the drama club, okay? Once I’m through with all the auditions, we have to complete the casting list, and start discussing the rehearsal schedule.”

Mrs. Rosen sat down at her table again, called the next audition up, and that appeared to be a dismissal; Richie nudged his glasses further up his nose, left the stage, and exited the auditorium, headed towards the closest boy’s room.

Ben and Eddie followed, hardly missing a beat.

“Richie?” Ben asked, entering the bathroom nervously.

He and Eddie found Richie holding one of the basins, at the line of sinks near the windows of the bathroom. His shoulders were high, by his ears, and his head was hung low, his long back arched.

He gave the impression he was shaking, though Eddie couldn’t tell where - maybe he was shaking all over, and so there was no one specific place to spot it in. His anxiety was palpable.

“I can’t do this,” Richie murmured.

“Richie - are you okay?” Ben inquired, stepping closer to his hunched figure, “No one’s gonna laugh, man, it’s alright. I think Mrs. Rosen’s willing to get kids suspended for laughing at this point, so, really, you’re safe.”

“No, I can’t do this! I gotta - I gotta run away! Flee the country! Commit identity fraud, start a new life! Kill myself! I don’t know! Anything but this, though!”

“Come on, Richie,” Ben encouraged, a weak smile splaying over his face at Richie’s hyperbolic personality, “You shouldn’t wig out like this - you should be proud of yourself. I think it’s rad you got the part of Romeo.”

“Rad? What coast do you think you’re on? This is as far away from alright as it gets! I can’t _ kiss _ E -” Richie cut himself off as he spun around, clearly realizing Eddie was in the room at only that very moment.

Not a little shamed, Eddie glared at him, blushing to his ears, and asked, “you’d rather kill yourself than kiss me? Jesus fuck, Richie, I’m sorry I’m such a fucking nightmare to you -”

“No, no,” Richie backpedaled, showing his hands, stepping toward Eddie as Eddie stepped backward, “I didn’t - that’s not what I meant -”

“Well, it’s what you said! A-And who would wanna kiss a Trashmouth like you, anyway?” Eddie asked rhetorically, his own embarrassment at rejection making him speak faster than his brain could check, or edit, “Fuck you, Richie."

High on adrenaline, Eddie left the bathroom, red from his collarbone to his fucking hairline, angry for at least seven different reasons, and already sorry he’d said what he had.

Reliably, Richie followed behind him, and called for him.

“Stop! Man, come on! Gimme a second to talk -”

“You should take a second to shut up for once, Richie,” Eddie told him spitefully.

“Okay!”

Eddie heard Richie’s footfalls stop, and that made him curious enough to turn around and examine him. 

Richie outstretched his arms, and helplessly flopped them back to his sides.

“Okay,” Richie repeated softly, “I’ll shut up.”

Eddie approached Richie slowly, prowling like a doubtful cat with slanted eyes.

“Fine. Speak,” Eddie ordered.

“I’m sorry,” Richie said immediately, “I’m freaked out - I didn’t think - I didn’t… this is weird. Right? It’s weird. I… I think you would’ve told me if you’d been kissed before, and I… I _ am _ a Trashmouth - you deserve better, and I didn’t think -”

“Okay, okay - wait - that’s a lot,” Eddie cut him off, “I - I shouldn’t have said that, about your nickname. About you. I was just… insulted. Cause, you’re right - I haven’t kissed anyone before, and it just sounded -”

“Bad,” Richie finished for him, “Yeah. It sounded bad. I’m sorry - I just thought I’d get a few dirty jokes in, get a sword fight, and die dramatically on stage, you know? I didn’t think…”

“Well, your audition…”

They stared at each other for a long, pregnant pause, then looked away simultaneously.

“I’m worried, you know,” Richie added, shoving his hands in his jean pockets again, “I’m worried Mrs. Rosen is putting a big target on your back. Mine too, but I don’t give as much of a shit about getting beat up as I do about you getting beat up. I guess when I realized I might be part of that, like… the reason you might get beat up, or threatened, or something, I…”

“I understand, Richie,” Eddie assured him, scuffing his sneaker on the linoleum floor, “We cool?”

“Yeah,” Richie confirmed, “Yeah, we’re cool. On the bright side, you and I will have loads of time to rehearse, since we hang out anyway.”

“Is that Richie Tozier, telling me he’s looking forward to _ practicing _ something?” Eddie asked skeptically.

“Practice wooing my Princess Eddie? The cutest of all the Elizabethan princesses to ever grace Derry, Maine?”

Eddie laughed, “fuck you, okay?”

“I will take it under consideration.”

“Oh my God, you’re the worst,” Eddie groaned, heading back toward the auditorium.

Richie followed after, laughing, and Eddie vehemently denied the hot, swirling sensation in his stomach.


	2. Wine-Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No trigger warnings for this chapter! Just unadulterated pining!

Rehearsals wouldn’t be the worst of it, as Eddie would find out. 

Ben had grimaced at the thought of wearing tights, as did Richie, but Eddie had fully let his head collapse on his folded arms, and groaned in despair at the news that he’d mostly be wearing skirts and dresses, making both Richie and Ben snicker until they got snapped at. 

Mrs. Rosen had quickly picked up on the fact that they, as a trio, would cause her grief in the coming weeks, and Eddie wouldn’t lie to her and deny it - if they didn’t make trouble to get dirty in, trouble would find them, no doubt. Any of the Losers, together in a single place, were bound to make trouble, no matter the combinations (perhaps with the exception of Bill, and Stanley being in the same place at once; they were always very gentlemanly, and well-behaved). 

The rehearsal schedule would be demanding, and Mrs. Rosen’s expectations were high; their first rehearsal would include rough blocking ideas, consulting the costume department (which mostly consisted of all the girls in the drama club taking everyone's measurements), and a full read-through and analysis of Act One.

Eddie had momentarily feared that all the boys Mrs. Rosen had snared in her trap would have gotten up and walked out at that news that the play would be really hard work, but, miraculously, they stayed seated.

It had sounded grueling, the work, but Eddie wasn’t entirely opposed - until he learned that rehearsals were not all he had to fear.

Mrs. Rosen kept both he and Richie after all of the drama club had been dismissed, casting had been finished, scripts had been distributed, and a tentative rehearsal schedule had been created. 

Once they were alone, she sat Eddie and Richie down on the stage, and stood before them.

“You two are friends outside of school?”

They both nodded, and Mrs. Rosen nodded back, pleased, and explained, “good. That will help. Listen - you two understand Shakespearean writing, but most of your classmates don’t. At least, not upon first reading it, or hearing it. I need you to not only deliver your lines in a way that the audience will understand, whether or not they understand the actual words being spoken, but I need them to believe Romeo and Juliet are in love.”

“That’s one of the most difficult aspects of this show; _ Romeo and Juliet _ is a _ good _ story, it’s tragic, it’s beautiful, it’s full of drama, and some of the heights of love in classic literature - but that hardly ever reaches the audience, because actors deliver it drily. Do you understand what I mean?”

Eddie and Richie traded a look, then stared back at her helplessly, and she sighed in defeat.

“You two - you need to _ sell _ their love. Romeo and Juliet aren’t just vehicles for historic prose, and poetry. I don’t want you two bumbling around on the stage, _ reciting_. Do you see? I want the audience to experience their tension, their romance - I want people to cry at the ending, and the only way to make that happen is to make the poetry of the show reasonably accessible to all, whether they have a grasp on Shakespeare or not, and oozing emotion.”

“So, this is about us… selling that Romeo and Juliet are actually in love, whether or not people actually understand what’s being _ said _,” Eddie offered.

“Yes,” Mrs. Rosen confirmed, “I’m going to be giving you two exercises to do during, and after school hours - exercises that will help to build your stage presence. Everything you practice, to get in touch with that raw emotion, I need you to bring to the stage. Understand?”

“But - it’s pretend,” Richie interjected, sounding nervous, though Eddie couldn’t imagine why, “It’s pretend. We’re pretending. Who cares if -”

“_I _care,” Mrs. Rosen told him, looking hard at him, “And if we do this right, the audience will care. Look, Richie - I get what I’m doing here. I know I’ve put you in a difficult position, and I know I’m asking a lot of you. What I’m trying to say is that if you trust me, if you put in the effort, I swear, the pay off will be worth all the trouble. You’ll walk away from this experience more grown, happier, more confident - it will be a good experience, if you let it be.”

Looking down at his dirty, thin sneakers, Richie wondered, “so, what sort of exercises, then?”

“The first exercise isn’t too hard - I read about a psychologist in New York using this as a way of testing whether or not eye-contact leads to feelings of trust. You two, four times today, are doing to spend a total of five minutes looking into each other’s eyes, without saying a word. When that time is up, tell the other something. It can be anything - your favorite color, a song that gets stuck in your head - whatever - and that will be for today, and you’ll do it at least once at every rehearsal.”

“So, we just stare at each other?” Eddie asked doubtfully.

“No, you are going to _ look _ into each other’s _ eyes_,” she specified, “It may not sound like much, but five minutes is a long time to stay silent, and to maintain eye-contact. It may make you uncomfortable at first, but I want you two to overcome that. It will get easier with practice.”

When met with silence, Mrs. Rosen suggested, “let’s give it a try now, okay? Turn to face each other - Richie, can you see anything with those off?”

“If I get up real close, I can,” Richie answered.

“Okay - sit on the stage, pretzel your legs, and get as close as you need to, so that you can see Eddie’s eyes clearly. If you need your glasses on after all, it won’t be the end of the world.”

They followed her instructions, and at first, a foot apart, Richie began inching closer, squinting in a dorky way that Eddie laughed at.

“Shut up, man!”

“You look like how my mom looks at the newspaper, when she’s holding it like ten yards away from her face,” Eddie laughed out.

Scooting closer still, Richie snorted, and told him, “sounds hot. I wouldn’t know what she’s like with the glasses off - I like for her to wear them when we -”

“Richie, I swear to God -”

“Okay, are you close enough?” Mrs. Rosen interrupted.

Hesitantly, Richie got close enough to drape his knobby knees over top Eddie’s, and then he leaned in close, keeping his face maybe ten inches from Eddie’s.

“Yeah,” Richie answered roughly; he cleared his throat, then looked up at Mrs. Rosen to confirm, “Yeah. I can see him like this.”

“Okay,” Mrs. Rosen began, looking at her watch, “I’m going to time you for exactly five minutes. Without saying a word, I want you two to just look at each other. Okay?”

The house lights were up, Mrs. Rosen was watching them closely, and it was very near four in the afternoon on a Thursday, so it wasn’t as though the environment was all too intimate. 

It _ shouldn’t _have been intimate, anyway.

Eddie set his jaw, flashed his eyes up like a challenge, and was met with what could only be described as an expression of anxiety.

It wasn’t as though Richie was doing something with his face to make that impression, but there was something about the lines around his eyes, something about the way his left brow was sitting that was just plainly anxious, to Eddie, but that may have had more to do with how well Eddie knew Richie, after all the years they’d shared.

Richie tilted his head down, then up, sort of invisibly scooping up Eddie’s attention again, emphasizing their eye-contact.

It hadn’t even occurred to Eddie that his vision had traveled around Richie’s face, but it had, he supposed - they were meant to be looking at each other’s _ eyes_. 

Breathing in deeply, Eddie readjusted his shoulders, and when they met eyes, all Eddie thought was, _ blue. _

He had never realized.

They were dark - _ very _ dark, but they were blue. Richie had blue eyes. 

He’d known Richie since elementary school - how had he never known that Richie had blue eyes? Dark blue eyes, at that. 

_ That’s got to be a non-dominant trait_, Eddie thought to himself.

He’d never known someone to have dark blue eyes, but there Richie was, right before him, closer than comfort would dictate, but there all the same, and his eyes were dark blue. 

After only a few seconds, Eddie began to realize why this was something they would have to practice at; maintaining the strong, close, uninterrupted eye-contact was becoming uncomfortable within the first minute.

He opened his mouth, thinking he’d break the leaden tension with a joke, or observation, but then he remembered the stipulation about silence, and so shut his mouth. 

Richie’s eyes never strayed from his.

He wondered how it was that Richie was able to do this with such apparent ease; he seemed genuinely unbothered, now that the initial anxiety had passed.

In fact, there was something glazed over about his eyes - they were too focused on Eddie’s for Eddie to think Richie was zoning out, but there was something about them. Something dreamlike. 

Maybe he was trying to focus his blurry sight.

His pupils were round, a little wide, but that made sense to Eddie somehow, even with all the house lights on. 

He tilted his head, not daring to break the gaze - if Richie could do it, Eddie was determined to do it, too.

Feeling brave and curious, Eddie leaned in closer, putting his elbows on Richie’s knees, and bringing their faces closer, to better look at his eyes.

Richie’s eyes flickered back and forth between Eddie’s as he came closer, maybe questioning him, but not in any way that Eddie could answer. There was no series of eyebrow movements that could communicate ‘I have literally never noticed what eye color you have, and now I’m trying to get a better look, so sit still.’ 

They were royal blue, and navy mostly, which Eddie could only identify so well because, a year back, he had to stand next to his mother in obedient silence while she debated what color the new guest towels should be. It had been tedious and stupid then, and ultimately the decision would be made between four different shades of dark blue that Eddie couldn’t, for the life of him, determine the difference between at the time. 

Now, he could, though. He understood why it meant so much to his mother, suddenly, that those blues were different from each other, because he could see them, all different, bleeding into each other in Richie’s irises.

Framed by ridiculously thick, long lashes, Richie’s eyes were blue in that dark, dark blue way that space sometimes looked, with the Milky Way bisecting it - space colored, almost purple. Upon closer inspection, Eddie could see speckles of indigo, and cobalt nearer to his pupils, and he thought, just briefly, that he was very lucky.

He was lucky to know Richie Tozier’s eyes were dark blues, space-colored, that they were _ wine-dark oceans_, his mind supplied - this thing, this little fact he was so sure almost no one else knew.

Richie’s parents had always sucked, neither of them would know, because they never noticed Richie in a way that mattered, but still, it made him feel good, in a strange, new way, that he, Eddie Kaspbrak, could tell the world what Richie Tozier’s eye color was, with all certainty. Not that anyone would ask him. Still, if anyone ever bothered to ask him, he’d know the answer. He’d know the answer to a question he was positive no one other than Richie himself could answer.

They were so striking, too, Richie’s eyes, that Eddie knew in his heart that he’d never forget them. He’d know Richie’s eyes forever, like this, he’d know them like he knows Richie’s parents wouldn’t, he’d know them if all other colors went away, and never came back.

He stopped his clinical observations long enough to take in what Richie was doing with his own eyes. 

To Eddie, it seemed that Richie was also cataloging Eddie’s eyes similarly. 

Richie was staring so closely, and every time his eyes shifted, his lashes shifted too, and something about that minute movement reminded Eddie of how raven’s feathers ruffle right before they settle, and fold back, and _ gosh, their faces were so close_. 

Had he ever had his face so close to Richie’s?

He must have, at some point. He must have.

They’d wrestled in the grass before, they’d tried drowning each other at the quarry countless times, they’d sat side-by-side at the cinema and whispered predictions to each other, and they’d played as kids near every day - they’d always gotten close, but this was different.

This was so still, so suspended. 

# You’ll all float.

_ No_, Eddie whispered in the back of his mind, _ This suspension is different. It’s different. _

It was hypnotic, though. Eddie had, thankfully, never experienced the Dead Lights, but he wondered if this paralysis he felt was anything like it. 

This was light, but heavy, and loaded, but free. This was so _ intentional_.

_ Will a girl look into Richie’s eyes like this one day, and say, ‘I do?’ _ came to Eddie’s mind, unbidden.

He felt himself flush.

Would some girl someday know Richie’s eye color? Would some funny girl who smokes, and dances, and rides dangerously on her bike take Richie away, someday? Whisk him away on some autumn breeze, take him somewhere Eddie won’t be able to follow him? Would she look into his eyes, and know the different shades of blue? Would she be able to name them, like Eddie? Would she think the indigo and cobalt near Richie’s pupils as interesting as Eddie did? 

_ Probably_, Eddie reasoned, _ yeah. _

Some day, Richie will meet somebody, and maybe he’ll know her eyes just as well. Maybe they’ll know each other’s eyes a way Eddie and Richie will never know each other’s eyes. Maybe Richie and his girl will feel things when they look into each other’s eyes - things that Eddie would never feel, and Richie would never feel for Eddie, and _ why was this train of thought bothering him so much_?

He realized his brow was scrunching up in distaste, but there was nothing to say or do. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t speak, he could only look into Richie’s eyes, and blindly hate some girl that didn’t even exist in their lives yet.

Eddie inwardly gave pause.

_ Why would I hate her? _

“Time,” Mrs. Rosen announced, sounding cautiously optimistic, “Go ahead, and say something to each other.”

Feeling suddenly cooled down, Eddie watched as Richie grabbed his glasses from the collar of his t-shirt, and shoved them back on his face. He then slid a good foot away, not looking up again, though Eddie was still staring at his face.

“I have a birthmark you don’t know about.”

“What?” Eddie asked, feeling off-kilter.

Richie shrugged, “she said I could tell you anything - that’s what I chose. There’s a birthmark I have on my body, and you’ve never seen it.”

“What? Bullshit! We’ve been swimming so many times, and you’re not exactly conservative, Richie, there’s no way that I -”

“Eddie,” Mrs. Rosen interrupted, “Tell Richie something.”

Glancing up apologetically, and briefly at Mrs. Rosen, Eddie nodded in agreement, and then looked to Richie again.

“There’s, uh - okay, so, in _ The Iliad_, and _ The Odyssey_, Homer describes the Aegean sea as ‘wine-dark,’” Eddie began, unconsciously picking at a cuticle on his left hand, “It’s this thing I learned in AP Literature - there like, weren’t words for ‘dark blue,’ back then. When Homer wrote those stories. So, he described the ocean as looking like wine, even though it was blue, right? But it was dark blue, it was like, the darkest, deepest part of that sea, so, everyone in that time understood what color he was talking about, and I thought… I just… I don’t think I’ve ever looked at Richie’s eyes that close before, and I thought… I thought that’s what Homer meant.”

At that, Richie picked his head up, looking uncharacteristically shy.

Eddie’s heart thumped in a weird way that made him kind of nauseous.

“Wine?”

“Wine-dark,” Eddie corrected, “You’ve got wine-dark eyes. Yeah.”

The tension was thick enough to cut with a knife, and thankfully, the one to pull the dagger was Mrs. Rosen.

“Perfect,” she congratulated them, “That was exactly the exercise - you two did wonderfully. Three more times today, okay? Find the time. It’s only five minutes - keep a timer nearby. Keep at it, and it will get easier.”

In his gut, Eddie worried simultaneously that it would get easier, and that, in some different, indistinguishable way, it _ wouldn’t _ get easier. That, somehow, in some strange, unknown way, it would only get harder.


	3. Bubbling Frost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Panic attacks, allusions to self-harm, mentions of flashbacks, auditory, and olfactory flashbacks, excessive pining

“So, you just need me to time you?” Stan asked, looking down at Eddie’s watch, which was in his hand.

“That, and I guess, make sure we’re staying on task,” Eddie explained, rubbing the strangely nude strip of pale skin on his wrist, “Like, neither of us are supposed to speak until the five minutes are up, so -”

“And we can’t break eye-contact,” Richie added, tucking his glasses into the front collar of his shirt, moving closer to Eddie across Stan’s living room couch, “Like, we can’t just be looking at each other’s faces. You gotta make sure we’re looking into each other’s eyes, and not around them.”

“Yeah,” Eddie agreed, trying valiantly to ignore the way Richie’s bony, stupid knees were overlapping his again.

“Okay,” Stan said, glancing briefly over at Bill, who was looking up from his homework with some intrigue, “I can do that. Tell me when you’re ready.”

Scattered across Stan’s living room floor, and on his parents’ love seats, Ben, Bev, and Bill were working on their most pressing school projects, and looked on with varying degrees of interest. 

Mike had called Stan’s house earlier to say he’d drop by in the afternoon, but they’d yet to see him. 

Either way, it had made sense to ask Stan for his help - with his birdwatching, he was practiced in this type of specialty patience, and observation. He wasn’t a people-watcher, to be fair, but he’d know how to sit quietly for a full five minutes, observing two very still people, without getting bored, restless, or otherwise distracted/distracting.

“Ready?” Stan prompted.

Richie adjusted his position, shifting closely to Eddie’s face - a little closer than he had in the auditorium, but Eddie thought that may have to do with the fact that Stan’s living room lacked house lights to aid in Richie’s vision. 

Bev snorted from where she was seated, chin in her hand, and lamented, “Richie, you poor, blind, bastard - maybe we should lay Eddie out on his back for you? You know, let you climb on top of him, so you can ‘see more clearly.’”

“Fuck you too, Bevvie Babe,” Richie replied, smirking a little; he found her very funny, despite himself.

She laughed to herself, and Stan sighed loudly, asking again, “are you guys ready?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m good,” Richie established, nodding, and then stabilizing in front of Eddie, “I’m good.”

“Yeah,” Eddie echoed weakly, then cleared his throat before adding, “You can start the timer.”

A beat later, Eddie heard the click of the timer on his watch, and snapped his eyes up into Richie’s.

_ That’s not right_, Eddie thought automatically, with a sudden, instinctive _ knowing_.

Nothing was visibly _ wrong _ with Richie’s eyes, nothing was ‘incorrect,’ exactly, but they were _ masked _somehow, there was a quality to them right then that hadn’t been there in the auditorium. Something disingenuous. 

The auditorium had been more private, though, Eddie supposed.

This would be their second time doing this exercise, and while Richie seemed happy to ditch the work assigned to them (“It’s not like she can check to see if did it or not,” Richie had argued, “Richie, we told her we would do it,” Eddie had said, and Richie had said back, “verbal agreements aren’t binding. You know this.” - they had fought for a full ten minutes before Richie buckled), Eddie had insisted.

Eddie wasn’t one to cheat, ditch, or take the path of least academic resistance - besides, he was absolute shit at lying to a teacher, or any authority figure. If, at school, Mrs. Rosen asked them both if they’d done the exercises, Richie would have no problem lying, but Eddie would give them away in a heartbeat, and frankly, he was a little terrified of Mrs. Rosen.

Without consulting Richie further than that, Eddie had asked Stan for his help, and, calm and collected as usual, Stan had approached the two on the couch, and asked what he could do for them. 

Knowing Richie as well as he did, Eddie thought it fair to theorize that Richie was being performative, even calm as he was. 

That, on the stage, there had been only Mrs. Rosen as an observer, someone who did not know either of them, and couldn’t decipher anything about Riche’s mood, or thoughts from a twitch, a tic, or specifically tuned exhale.

Strangely, in the privacy of Stan’s living room, amongst their friends, Richie seemed more guarded, and more aware, as if he was blocking Eddie out.

That on the stage, he was earnest, but now, behind closed doors, he was performing.

Richie was always _ on_, so to speak, around the Losers - he was always moving, jumping onto the next moving piece of conversation, riffing, a constant stream of commentary; he was so kinetic, he was so active, and he and Eddie usually complemented each other well that way. 

Richie was a lot like lightning - striking randomly a lot, sometimes unpredictable, sometimes more so, superheating whatever he struck, and it was like Eddie was a fucking lightning tower. Designed, and built to not only draw in Richie’s lightning, but to absorb it, work it through himself, disperse it, keep everything from exploding, or catching fire.

Lightning towers didn’t strike back, as far as Eddie knew, though, so the analogy might be flawed.

That was one thing he could sincerely say he was proud of; Richie would be awe-struck when Eddie would get a good zinger in, and he’d made a habit of clapping Eddie on the back, and saying, “oh, Eds, you give it as good as you get, man,” and laughing beautifully. 

Whenever that happened, Eddie _ would _ superheat.

He’d be charged from Richie, and he’d pass it along - sometimes back to Richie just to have it bounced back and forth all day, or sometimes dispersing it among the Losers, for everyone to absorb. 

At that moment, though, Eddie got nothing from Richie; the air wasn’t charged, and, if anything, Eddie felt… bored.

Which was not an emotion he associated with Richie Tozier at all.

He was looking at a wall - a figurative one, but a wall all the same. He wanted past it, he wanted to see what was beyond it, but Richie didn’t give the air of someone who would lower his guard so easily.

Eddie wished he’d noticed that there ever was a guard up in the first place.

He tried sneaking past the blockades, tried humoring his way in with a batted eyelash, but nothing changed in Richie’s wine-dark eyes. 

It was like he was on auto-pilot, and there was some polite, if a little cold, default sign over them, saying, ‘no entry.’

Then, on an impulse, Eddie tentatively reached forward, touching Richie’s exposed forearm in the grip of his left hand.

He didn’t tug on Richie, or even properly hold on to him - he delicately placed just his fingertips to the satin soft underside of Richie’s wrist, and watched, with some degree of humiliation, as Richie’s eyes sparked to life - petrified life - and then Richie withdrew his arm as if scalded.

Eddie could read panic in Richie’s eyes, and something almost like betrayal, but he wasn’t sure why. 

He tried to ask a question with his own stare, but Richie was frozen, and his eyes only said something like; _ why did you touch me - I didn’t give you permission to touch me - why would you touch me - you weren’t supposed to do that_.

_ Why are you hiding? _ Eddie tried to ask silently, _ Come out, Richie. Come back to me. You touch me all the time without permission - it’s what we do. What’s scaring you? How are you even able to hide like this, right in front of me? Are you always half-hidden around us? _

Richie was a Showman - capital ‘S,’ so why would he hide from a captive audience; an audience that, by following the rules, couldn’t look away? What reason did Richie have to hide from anyone, or anything? It wasn’t as though Richie Tozier knew shame.

But, maybe that wasn’t fair to say.

Maybe Richie did feel shame about stuff, maybe his shame was big, and loud like a carnival, so he needed to be bigger, and louder than it, so people wouldn’t notice. Maybe he used the smoke and mirrors of his jokes to make everyone look in the wrong direction. 

Richie was funny, he always would be, but maybe the Showman wasn’t actually all that Richie was, or more over, not _mainly _who Richie was - maybe Richie was someone who preferred privacy, but didn’t like people knowing that about him. Maybe Richie was someone who remained hyper-vigilant, and initiated touch, not to make others uncomfortable, but to better know and control his surroundings. 

Maybe Richie liked being a Showman, liked being on a stage, because on a stage, Richie could be Anyone, and maybe, if Richie felt shame like other people did, then he’d _ want _to be Anyone Else. Anyone other than Richie. 

The stage was a good place for that - an even better place for authenticity, if one was acting every other minute of the day. 

_ That must be exhausting_, Eddie thought, weighing how true any of that felt, still trying to determine if he was letting himself get carried away or not. 

If Eddie was onto something, though, and if any amount of that was true, or real, then Richie was acting as his own ventriloquist doll, day after day. 

Richie was puppeteering himself, making it seem like the jokes, the insults, the zingers, the Voices, and the laughter were all coming from his Showman’s mouth - his Trashmouth - drawing everyone’s attention to where the noise _ seemed _ to come from, but maybe that’s not where the noise came from at all. Maybe it was a trick.

Maybe it was all a clever ploy, all a “look here at the funny man seated in front of me, on display for you - just don’t look too closely at my own lips.” 

Briefly, Eddie wondered what side of Richie it was that, reportedly, punched Bill in the face when they were thirteen.

Was there a Richie Tozier hiding behind the one he knows, someone who’s angry, vengeful, and shameful? 

Eddie heard a cartoonish voice in his head say back, ‘I’m not the real Richie Tozier, but I play one on t.v!’ followed by canned laughter.

They’d known each other nearly a decade - was he only just figuring out that Richie play-acted at being himself? How much of it was real? How much did he actually know about Richie Tozier?

This was a long con, if it was one at all - it made Eddie wonder how capable a liar Richie was.

When Stan eventually called “time,” Richie broke away just as quickly as he had in the auditorium, smashing his glasses up on his face unceremoniously, and mumbling, “you first.”

Eddie shuffled a little on the couch cushion, feeling cooler than he liked his skin to feel, and generally uncomfortable, as though all the insides of his clothes had burs on them.

He didn’t think he should voice what he was thinking, because his thoughts had made his heart ache, and he missed Richie all while being way too in each other’s spaces. 

Richie had been right there, sat before him, but also miles away, and maybe always had been - had maybe always been a comfortable distance from Eddie, save a few precious instances where he decimated his own walls to make it to Eddie, on the other side.

“There’s this, uh - Alexander Pope quote, I think, that goes something like ‘is not absence death to those that love,’” Eddie said nervously, “I know it’s not like… I know that’s not… a thing about me, exactly. It’s just… it’s what I was feeling.”

Richie looked up at Eddie again, a little more real, and perhaps concerned for him.

Maybe concerned for himself - maybe he was worried Eddie had looked too long into his eyes, and had seen the truth.

“You?” Eddie asked.

“I don’t wanna say it.”

Shifting focus from Eddie, Stan’s brow furrowed.

“Is it cause I’m here?”

Richie scratched the back of his head, “it’s just… personal.”

“Too personal to share with the Losers Club?” Stan inquired, his worry becoming evident.

“I just don’t want everyone to, like - freak out, or anything,” Richie said, to Stan’s further dismay.

Bill piped up from the coffee table, sitting on the floor, “what if we p-promise n-non-reactions? N-No m-matter what you s-say?”

Richie tilted his head in consideration, then agreed, “okay. As long as no one says anything.”

Bev mimicked zipping her lips and tossing a key away, Ben nodded loyally, Bill gave the signal of scout’s honor, and Stan nodded to him, erasing the concern from his face, “I won’t say anything.”

Heaving a sigh, Richie looked back at Eddie, and confessed, “I broke the mirror on the second floor boy’s bathroom a couple weeks ago.”

“That was you?” Ben asked immediately; he was quickly elbowed by Bill, and silenced.

Scratching at his chin, Richie looked down at Eddie’s hands, very near his crossed ankles, and continued, “I had a… like, a memory. Of It.”

A pregnant silence fell over the room.

Richie didn’t look up to them.

“When that happens, sometimes it helps to get hurt. I don’t, like, usually hurt myself badly, or anything, but getting hurt sort of makes shit feel real again, you know? And, I don’t know why I said it, exactly - I mean, I do know… in the context of the memory, and shit, it made sense, but I punched the mirror, and said ‘I don’t wanna be you anymore,’ - like, out loud, even though I was the only one in the bathroom. Even though I knew it was only a memory.”

Eddie swallowed around a hot lump in his throat, wanting very badly to reach out and touch Richie, but unsure of his touch’s welcome.

“Toward the end there, of the staring, I… that’s all I heard, on repeat in my head,” Richie explained, gesturing vaguely with his hand by his temple, “I heard the glass breaking, and heard myself saying, ‘I don’t wanna be you anymore, I don’t wanna be you anymore.’”

As if testing the non-reactions promised him, Richie looked up at Eddie, then Stan, and then over to the love seats, and the table where Bev, Bill, and Ben were sitting.

Eddie wouldn’t know how successful they were - his eyes were stuck on Richie.

_ Are you okay? Are you okay now? _ Eddie wanted to ask, _ I don’t want you to be anyone else. Richie, please, don’t ever be anyone else, _Eddie wanted to say, but he couldn’t.

That would be reactionary. 

And maybe Richie wouldn’t know what he meant - if Richie was play-acting himself all these years, maybe Richie would take it to mean, ‘don’t be anyone other than the person I know best,’ and not in the way Eddie would intend it to mean.

He glanced up at Stan for some help, and Stan read him loud and clear; he always did, and he seemed to want to comfort Richie too - he’d take the fall, if what he was about to say seemed reactionary. He was good, and brave, that way.

“I read a poem once,” Stan began, clearly directing what he was saying to Richie, but allowing it to appear as if it were a conversational piece for the room at large, “It was about a woman who hated her body. It was about how conventional beauty standards had made her hate herself; she thought herself too hairy, too fat, and all this other stuff - she spent her entire life unable to love herself, and then, one day, she looked in the mirror, and said to her body, ‘I’m tired of fighting, I’m tired of feeling badly. I want to try to be your friend,’ and her body gave a great sigh, began to weep, and said back to her, ‘I’ve been waiting for this my entire life.’”

Richie had no joke to add to that, and it would take another ten minutes of near-silence among them, an offer to get colas, and Mike arriving for Richie to come back to himself - well, to his Showman self.

Eddie, now that he knew what to look for, could see immediately that whatever Richie was around their friends, it wasn’t completely insincere, but there was a secret-keeper in his eyes, a lion tamer, an acrobat, a juggler of faces. He was hiding behind meticulously placed walls, planned walls, walls with purposes, and specific boundaries, walls that kept the elephants, lions, tigers, bears, and fire-breathing from encroaching onto the audience. 

He wondered when Richie built them.

Why he built them.

Why there was a circus at all.

Somehow, Eddie couldn’t imagine asking Richie without being met with a wall, himself, established for the precise scenario of someone asking about their existence.

So, rather than talking, he drank his cola, finished his homework, and watched Richie flirt disastrously with Bev, Bill, and Mike, to everyone’s delight - Eddie noticed, too, that Richie did more Voices than usual.

Stan might have noticed too, but they only traded a single glance over Richie’s head, so Eddie couldn’t know Stan’s full analysis.

He left Stan’s house later, feeling very sure Stan had one, though.

* * *

After obligatory kisses, and cheek-pinching were thankfully over and done with, Eddie told his mother they had to finish a project together; it was only a half-lie, so she seemed to believe him easily enough, but still insisted Richie leave by nine.

It was not a well-kept secret that Eddie’s mother had never liked Richie, and Eddie knew well enough that she’d held a dim hope that Eddie would ‘see the light,’ in their adolescence, and ‘outgrow,’ Richie. 

To say she was supremely disappointed as the years trudged on, and Richie Tozier did not move an inch in any direction but up would be a severe understatement. 

Eddie was of the opposite mind when it came to Richie, of course - he couldn’t imagine life without him. In fact, at times, Eddie wondered how it was that Richie hadn’t outgrown _ him_.

Not wanting to give Richie anymore opportunity to find a way to insult his mother (not that he had, but more than three minutes in front of Eddie’s mother, and Richie would find a way), he dragged Richie up the stairs to his bedroom, and closed the door. 

Once they were in his room, he released Richie’s forearm, dropped his book bag, toed off his shoes, and collapsed onto his bed with a tired groan that aged him fifty years.

“Sexy,” Richie joked.

“Shut the fuck up, Rich,” Eddie mumbled half-heartedly into his bedsheets; he was deeply tired from the day. 

“You wanna get this, uh, staring thing out of the way? Then I can, you know - hit the road. Let you eat your well-balanced dinner with Sonia, get outta here before Wheel of Fortune.”

Richie had some humor in his voice still, but he sounded tired, too.

The day had been long for them both, after all. 

“Yeah,” Eddie told him, wanting very badly to get into bed, and go to sleep.

He went to sit up, maybe move to the floor, and then Richie made a hard-to-translate gesticulation with both his arms that gave Eddie pause.

“What?”

“I, uh… remember how Bev joked around earlier, about me being able to see better, with you, like... lying down?”

Eddie swallowed roughly.

“Yeah.”

“Can we… I know it’s weird, or whatever, cause I don’t wanna make you, like, think I - but if you’re - actually - nevermind, you don’t have to do anything, it’s probably too close for comfort, it was a bad idea, nevermind, I -”

There was a growing sense of dread and panic emanating from Richie, as though he’d said something truly toxic, and horrible, and wanted to backpedal as fast as the universe would allow. 

There was no reason for such shyness between them; they’d invaded each other’s spaces for literal years, after all, and, really, Eddie was sick of Richie finding ways to draw away from him that day.

Maybe getting in each other’s faces would make them laugh again - reestablish some normalcy. 

The idea was clearly making Richie nervous, but knowing it may help them both on several levels, for several reasons, Eddie didn’t want Richie to feel so panicked about it, if he could help it. He didn’t like seeing Richie so insecure.

So, in an effort to calm Richie down, Eddie waved him off flippantly, though he was flustered too at the thought of having Richie lie on top of him. On his bed. In his room. With enviable privacy, as Sonia wanted less than nothing to do with Richie.

“Hey - no, it’s fine - my room’s got bad lighting, and you’re great, dude, but your knees have elbows, and those elbows have ankles, and I might actually be fine with not having your knees jammed up on mine for five minutes,” Eddie joked; his palms were sweating.

Only very slightly mollified, Richie nodded, and nervously stepped forward, “okay. Uh - I guess, get comfortable, and I’ll… I’ll -”

“Yeah,” Eddie repeated uselessly.

Backing up on his bed, Eddie removed his watch, set the timer, and announced that he was ready whenever Richie was.

There was a long few beats of strained silence in which Eddie could feel Richie’s eyes on him, but didn’t dare look up into Richie’s eyes; something was different about him that night, and he didn’t want to further excite, or agitate him, not to mention that Eddie could only handle so many revelations in a single day, he really needed their last staring exercise to be over - and then Richie’s weight sank on the bed.

Eddie’s heart pounded, and he felt a compulsion to clear his throat. His hands twitched at either side of his hips; he pulled them up to his stomach, folding them, to keep them from moving so much, but his fingers still twitched about restlessly.

Richie set his glasses down on Eddie’s bedside table, and Eddie stared over at them, feeling heat curl up from his toes to his waist, and his chest felt tight; somehow, seeing Richie’s glasses tucked carefully on his bedside table was a more loaded, intimate sight than anything they’d practiced thus far, and he had a budding sensation at the back of his head.

An idea was bubbling to life, a knowing, a certainty coming into focus - something he didn’t want to look directly at, because, if he did, he couldn’t un-know it. Once he acknowledged whatever was knocking at the back of his brain, it would rush to the fore like a tidal wave, and take up all the room left.

Richie’s forearms framed Eddie’s head then, as he insinuated his leg between Eddie’s, the tufts of his hair falling down to shadow the both of them.

To Eddie’s horror, there was nothing funny about any of it.

“Okay,” Richie murmured, the tip of his nose hovering maybe an inch above Eddie’s.

Shakily, Eddie clicked the button on the side of his wristwatch to start the timer, and did not break eye-contact with Richie.

Richie’s eyes were right, this time, if there was a right way for eyes to be - they gleamed in just the right way, in the way Eddie knew best, and emotions could be read clearly from them; he wasn’t hiding. 

His lashes were awfully long, and thick, Eddie considered - it was girly, kind of, but they only enhanced the beauty of Richie’s eyes. He probably wouldn’t like a compliment like that, though, so Eddie decided to keep that opinion to himself.

He wondered if it would ever be okay to bring It back up to Richie; if he’d ever be willing to talk about the mirror, or the memories that attack him in daylight, in their school. 

He wanted to know if Richie hurt himself on purpose often, and if he did, if Eddie could somehow help him to stop. 

He hated the thought of Richie hurting.

He searched Richie’s eyes for some answer, some guidance - he wanted Richie to know how much he wanted to be there for him, and he wanted to know if Richie wanted him there, in his own times of need, the way Eddie liked to have Richie. 

He gazed deeply, trying to decipher the swirling blues in Richie’s irises…

# What are you looking for, Eddie?

His breath hitched, and his stomach turned over - he crushed his eyes shut instinctively, suddenly petrified.

His nose got budged then, by Richie’s, and his eyes opened up, and came back into focus. 

In Eddie’s periphery, he could tell Richie was smiling nervously, and his eyes were saying, _ stop worrying, doofus, I’m right here_. 

Eddie attempted to smile back, but was unsure of his success.

_ It isn’t here anymore. We killed It_, Eddie assured himself, looking hard into Richie’s eyes, determined to shake the bad memories, _ Calm down. Breathe. _

“Are you okay?”

“We’re not supposed to talk,” Eddie murmured back, wondering if he should restart the timer.

“Yeah, but you look… just - are you alright?”

Eddie realized a touch too late that he couldn’t lie - Richie was gazing deeply into his eyes, he’d see the lie for what it was. So, he goes to lie, but winds up only making a small, choked noise, and then sighing in defeat.

“I got scared.”

“Of me?”

“Of It. I… I had a memory.”

After a moment’s consideration, Richie’s weight fell more onto him, his brows curved in, and his left hand came up to cup Eddie’s cheek; his calloused hitchhiker’s thumb rubbed back and forth over the skin there.

“It’s okay, Eds. I’m right here. It’s dead, and It’s never coming back. And if it did, if It came back someday, or even right now, I’d protect you. Okay?”

Eddie wanted to say something like, ‘I don’t need you to protect me, dickward,’ or, ‘I can defend myself, thanks,’ or, ‘what, you’re gonna use your stupid noodle arms, and put him in your shit headlock?’ but truthfully, Eddie knew that Richie was already aware of those things (including how bad he was at wrestling).

Richie didn’t say those things because he thought Eddie was weak, or helpless - he said those things because he wanted Eddie to not feel so alone.

Eddie knew that, and so did Richie.

All at once, Eddie was brimming with gratitude; he was so glad Richie would be Romeo - if he had to be Juliet, which it appeared was something predestined for him, he was certainly glad Richie got to be Romeo. The thought of doing these exercises with anyone else made Eddie so deeply uncomfortable, he barely knew what to do with himself.

Luckily, though, Richie was there before anyone else. Always. 

_ You’re good at that_, Eddie thought at Richie, with no real intention of pushing the message into Richie’s brain; happy just to think it. 

_ You’re so good at being there for me when I need you most, _Eddie thought, his eyes moving back and forth between Richie’s, _ I wanna be there for you too, you know. I don’t know if I could grab a bat, and beat to death whatever scares you - I can be a pussy sometimes, but I care about you. I care about you so much. You know, right? _

Involuntarily, Eddie’s right hand rose, his arm bending at the elbow, and he carefully tucked his palm against Richie’s side, his pinky finger brushing at the exposed, overly warm skin where his t-shirt was rucked up. 

He felt Richie gasp above him, but their gaze never split. 

Richie leaned into the touch after a moment, and his eyes told Eddie, _ I’m sorry about earlier_.

Eddie wanted to smile, but he couldn’t. He wasn’t sure why. Everything just felt too heavy, inside, to smile. 

# Time to take your pill, Eddie.

“Ah!” Eddie jumped as his timer went off, his heart beating violently in his throat, a memory of the smell of death, and rotting flesh stuck in his nostrils.

“Hey, hey - okay, look at me - look at me, Eddie, I’m right here, I’m right here -”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” Eddie wheezed, scrambling for his inhaler on his bedside table.

“Hey, no - no,” Richie stopped him, grasping both his wrists, and pinning him down to his mattress.

“Rich, I -”

“Breathe, Eds. _ Breathe_,” Richie commanded, “You’re okay. I’m right here, I’m not going anywhere, I'm not gonna let anything bad happen to you. We’re both okay.”

Not that the efforts weren’t appreciated (they weren’t, actually - Eddie had half a mind to knee Richie in the fucking groin for restricting his movements to keep him away from his inhaler, but he couldn’t move his weak legs properly), but despite those efforts, Eddie still couldn’t catch his breath. He could only look up helplessly at Richie with wide, terrified eyes, feeling like he might be sick.

Richie sank down further into him, like a cat getting comfortable in his lap, and their cheekbones brushed, as Richie ran the sides of their faces together, almost like nuzzling, but too light a touch to be called that. 

Eddie felt the flutter of Richie’s eyelashes against his skin.

“Love has Earth to which she clings, with hills and circling arms about - wall within wall to shut fear out. But Thought has need of no such things, for Thought has a pair of dauntless wings.”

Confused, Eddie turned his face a little, bringing his mouth dangerously close to Richie’s, and his throat constricted more tightly. His body could hardly tell what direction was up; his only compass was Richie.

But, he trusted Richie, so that was okay.

“On snow and sand and turf, I see, where Love has left a printed trace, with straining in the world's embrace. And such is Love and glad to be. But Thought has shaken his ankles free.”

Richie pulled up more, to better look into Eddie’s eyes again; he released one of Eddie’s wrists, and returned his left hand to Eddie’s cheek, rubbing his thumb in that comforting rhythm. 

“Thought cleaves the interstellar gloom, and sits in Sirius' disc all night, till day makes him retrace his flight; with smell of burning on every plume, back past the Sun to an Earthly room.”

Voice gone softer, Richie took a deep breath; Eddie could feel how deep it was, because Richie’s diaphragm expanded against his, and Eddie mimicked it as he listened, rapt.

“His gains in Heaven are what they are. Yet some say Love by being thrall, and simply staying possesses all... in several beauty that Thought fares far, to find fused in another star.”

“That’s -”

“Robert Frost.”

“How are you not in my AP classes?” 

Smiling again, Richie shrugged, and admitted, “I hate doing homework, and I don’t care about college credits. Every time a guidance counselor has tried to convince me to do AP, I just tell them the truth; I'm not gonna do the work. I'll wind up flunking out of AP, cause I won't do the work. And, like... I won't. So.”

“Do you… do you just know stuff like that?”

“I’m good at memorizing,” Richie told him casually, just as he’d told Mrs. Rosen - he had recited that poem with such kindness, and thoughtfulness, though, it was more than memorization. In fact, as Richie had spoken it, it sounded more like a benediction. 

Having regained his ability to breathe normally, Eddie took stock of himself; he first noticed that falls of blood were no longer rushing in his ears, and he was not shaking as violently as before, though everything still felt overexposed. 

Robert Frost was probably not the answer to all of his panic attacks, but Richie using his body to literally ground him, while speaking in soft tones to him might be a new medicine he didn't know he needed. 

Richie would never hurt Eddie, not on purpose, not like he apparently does to himself - so maybe, holding him down, keeping him from his bullshit inhaler, and shocking him back into place with poetry was his own way of 'hurting,' Eddie, and steadying him back into reality.

Eddie wondered if the same would work on Richie, if ever the occasion arose.

“Hello, Major Tom, are you receiving?”

Eddie smirked despite himself, “yeah, I’m - I’m okay.”

“You’re sure?”

“You’re nice, like this, Richie.”

Richie turned a bit rigid, and Eddie felt Richie’s heart thump against his own chest.

“What?” Richie asked, “Like what?”

“When you’re not jumping through hoops, and stuff, to make me laugh, or whatever," Eddie admitted, smiling lopsidedly at him, "That’s the thing I wanna share, I guess. I like this. I like it when you’re serious with me.”

Richie swallowed roughly, pulled his hands away, and drew back his weight, sitting back on his haunches, and straddling Eddie’s calf.

“Uh… okay. Noted,” Richie replied, raising his thumb to his mouth to bite at a cuticle, looking down at Eddie's bedding, "Mine was the Frost poem, I guess."

Eddie missed Richie’s weight on him, but didn’t say anything about that.

The banging at the back of his head got louder, though - that bubbling Nothing that Eddie was aggressively ignoring was demanding audience with him, and Eddie feared that soon, he would have very little choice in the matter of acknowledging it.

That was a Later Eddie Problem, though, as Richie would put it - so instead of dwelling on how warm, and safe Richie made him feel, Eddie tried to simply appreciate the calming of his heart rate and blood pressure, and passed Richie his glasses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's just about midnight as I'm editing this chapter, which means it's going up on my birthday! Hurrah! Enjoy!
> 
> For reference, the poem Richie recites is Bond and Free, by Robert Frost, and the lyrics he speaks to Eddie are from 'Major Tom,' by Peter Schilling.


End file.
